EPICTETUS

Stoic philosopher of the I. cent. A. D.; a slave in Rome, after wards freed, When Domitian expelled the philosophers from Rome he settled and taught in Epirus. His philosophy was predominantly ethical and religious, its main tenets being the care of God for man, the indifference of all social distinctions, and the dependence of man’s happine upon his will. Epicurus (341-270 B.O.), though an A then i an, was probably b. in Samos. 307 he sett’ in Athens, and there formed a society of friends, whose central meeting-placo was a garden in the town. The decay of the free city state naturally led to concentration of thought upon the interests of the individual and to separation of ethical from Spneeebonn theory. The ethical dotrine of. was hedonistic; welfare consists in pleasure and in pleasure alone. But, unlike the Cyrenaics, he urged his friends to have regard, not only to the pleasant moment, but to the pleasure of life as a whole; to estimate, therefore, the pleasures of the mind and of friendship above those of the body; and to prefer calm to violent excitement. Far from being ‘epicures,’ the members of the society (at any rate in its earlier days) led a frugal and abstemious life. In physics E. maintained a crude form of atomism; in metaphysics a crude materialism, with which he inconsistently combined a belief in freedom of the will.